


Reggie Mantle is a Five Star Man

by jessicamiriamdrew



Category: Archie Comics, Archie Comics & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, M/M, the its always sunny in philadelphia au that no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:02:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9927983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/pseuds/jessicamiriamdrew
Summary: Loosely based off of the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia s10 episode 'The Gang Group Dates.'Reggie thinks group dating will be the key to banging all the chicks he wants, but it doesn't seem to be working out for him. Especially when there's a rating system, and girls are daring to rate Mantle the Magnificent less than 5 stars.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedShiloh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedShiloh/gifts).



> reghead, side beronica, au etc, general misogyny within but not too bad idt. (definitely not any worse than always sunny!) drunkenness, and one short scene w/ vomiting but not super detailed. archie is barely in this, just how it turned out. i can't believe archie comics is what has me breaking my ao3 hiatus. honestly it’s not even smutty. theres some making out. thats all. bye
> 
> this is for susiw because she encouraged me when she really shouldn't have
> 
> this is archie canon, not riverdale, but honestly, it's such an au that it doesn't matter.

For some reason, people aren’t getting along with Reggie as well as he thinks. He was pretty sure this group dating thing would work, because, well, Archie and Jughead are nowhere near as attractive as he is. He only convinced them to do it because that’s the premise of the stupid Bunchers app. Archie was into it because he’s girl crazy, and he promised to take Juggie to an all you can eat buffet tomorrow.  
  
He gets along with _tons_ of girls and has dated so many of them. Maybe he just needs to get rid of Archie and Jughead. Archie is somehow more attractive to the three girls, and the weird hipster shit coming out of Jughead’s mouth doesn’t help anyone.  
  
Reggie wants to get laid, or at least get to third base. He scowls into his shot of whiskey before he throws the whole thing back. “So,” he says, addressing all three of the women. “I have a rescue dog.” He holds up the leash that’s been sitting in his lap. He’s convinced this will work. No woman can resist a man who loves animals. All three women lean in a bit towards him. _Finally._ “His name is Hot Dog,” Reggie says, because he forgot to actually think of a dog’s name.  
  
Jughead bristles next to him. _Shit._ Bad move to use Jughead’s family dog name.  
  
“He doesn’t have a dog, ladies,” Jughead says. _Fucking traitor. See if you get your buffet meal_.  
  
“Are you serious?” The redhead is already pushing her chair back.  
  
“No, no, I do,” Reggie says. He laughs, but it sounds terrible. “His name just isn’t Hot Dog.” Jughead slurps the bottom of his alcoholic milkshake and shakes his head.  
  
Archie elbows him. “I thought this would work, Reggie. Because they’ll be emotionally connected to the dog, and you?”  
  
Reggie sighs and rubs his forehead. He should’ve known better. Andrews is too dumb to understand how the game works, or too nice, and Jughead doesn’t care enough to even try.  
  
The three women all exchange a look before collectively pushing back their bar stools and walking away.  
  
“Thanks, assholes.” To think he’d let them put their drinks on his tab too. To make matters worse, Ronnie is leaving the bar with a cute blonde, and she turns back to smirk at him while they exit. Reggie can’t believe he wasted hair gel on this.  
  
He ends up doing enough shots that night that Jughead has to help them back to their apartment. “Why’d you tell them the dog wasn’t real,” he says while he grasps Jughead’s arm for dear life. Why in the hell does their apartment building have multiple floors and no elevator?  
  
Jughead sighs and readjusts Reggie’s weight against his side. Reggie’s vision blurs out, and he’s regetting that last round of kamikaze shots. “You don’t have to lie to women to get them to sleep with you.” That’s almost nice of Juggie, he thinks. At least someone around here has some sense about how attractive he is. “Hang on,” Jughead says. They made it to their apartment door at some point, and Jughead’s trying to unlock the door. Reggie squints at him but still can’t really tell, but it makes sense.  
  
“Because I’m so hot, right?” Reggie almost falls onto Jughead and knocks him over as the door opens but Jughead catches him.  
  
Jughead sighs and slams the door. “If they’re desperate enough they’ll sleep with you anyway.”  
  
Fucking rude as shit. Reggie shoves him, but he’s so uncoordinated that all he really succeeds in doing is knocking off Jughead’s beanie. “You’re no fuckin prize either Jug.” Reggie storms off toward their bathroom, and barely makes it to the toilet in time to throw up.  
  
By his rough estimate he throws up for a few hours. He’s exhausted by the end of it and is seriously considering sleeping on the bathroom floor. Reggie starts to shuffle to the rug when a hand stops him. “Come on, Reg.” Jughead hoists him up and takes him to his bedroom. Jughead stays with him while he gets under the covers. “Don’t choke and die,” he says, and Reggie rolls over to grin into his pillow. Jughead yanks him back around. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll make sure you stay alive, but you owe me _two_ buffet meals.”  
  
Reggie doesn’t remember anything clearly past vomiting in the toilet, in the morning, but he never tucks the blankets around himself.

-  
Veronica is smug the next day, clearly having gotten laid by that poor blonde woman she took home. “Her name is Betty, and I _swear_ , Reggie, I’ve never gotten off so many times in my life.”  
  
“Bully for you.” God. Veronica is insufferable when she gets laid and Reggie is still smarting after last night. He’s hung over, and Jughead has been bothering him all day about when he’s going to get his free meal. Somehow it’s become two buffet meals, according to Jughead, and Reggie must be missing some time from the night before. He would never promise Jughead _two_ meals.  
  
Reggie doesn’t even remember the last time he sealed the deal with anyone. Is he really getting to be that pathetic? He gets himself a beer from behind the bar.  
  
“It’s 11 am,” Jughead says pointedly.  
  
“I own this bar too, Jug.” Reggie pops the cap off on the side of the bar’s wooden surface. He catches the cap in his hand and tosses it at Jughead. He misses by a lot, but it still makes him feel better.  
  
“Maybe I’ll do another group date tonight,” he says. The beer he grabbed is lukewarm, which is annoying, but he’s not going to _not_ drink it at this point.  
  
“Count me out,” Jughead says. “I don’t want to deal with your drunken broken heart again.” Jughead is chopping up limes and lemons, and doesn’t even turn Reggie’s way.  
  
“Veronica?” He asks hopefully. Ronnie is better at this than Archie and Jughead are, for sure. Ronnie looks up from her phone to flash him a snide smile.  
  
“Please,” she says. “Betty invited me over again, and you’d just bring down my success rate anyway.” She’s typing furiously on her phone and then stands up to hand it to him. “See?” she says. “You can rate people you meet on bunchers, or any of those dating sites.” The phone browser is open to Veronica’s page. She has a 4.96 rating, based on twenty votes.  
  
_Infuriating. She’s infuriating_. That’s why they’re such good friends though. “Wait, am I on here? Is Arch on here?”  
  
Veronica shrugs but won’t meet his eyes. His stomach sinks, and he takes another swig of his disgusting beer. “Only one way to find out. Let’s start with Archie.”  
  
Gross, Archie’s profile picture pulled from the bunchers site is boring. How does anyone agree to go out with him when he’s got that picture? It’s fine, it’s just…a smile. A normal pose. Unreal. He scrolls down to see the rating. A 3.5? If Archie has a 3.5, then Reggie must be pretty close to Veronica, which he can live with.  
  
He types in his own name, and waits for it to load. There’s his perfect profile photo, one that he spent a few hours working on. There’s two filters applied to different parts of the photo, and his beautiful car is in the background. It’s perfect. “A 1.5?!” He drops Ronnie’s phone on the bar. “That’s _ridiculous_ , how could anyone rate me that low?”  
  
Jughead chortles behind him, and makes a half ass attempt to turn it into a cough.  
  
“Whatever, _Forsythe._ Your rating must be negative.”  
  
“Actually,” Ronnie says as she walks around to grab her phone, “He’s a 3.5 too. I checked everyone’s earlier.” Ten seconds later her phone is back in Reggie’s hand and Jughead indeed has a 3.5 rating.  
  
“Un-fucking-believable.” He doesn’t need this kind of shit. Someone probably hacked the website, or Ronnie paid off a bunch of girls to get his rating so low.  
  
“Two points, Reg.” Jughead’s voice cuts in, and suddenly, Reggie doesn’t want to go back to their apartment tonight. He doesn’t want Jughead’s faux pity or mocking behavior, or whatever the hell it’ll end up being. Why does he even care what Jughead thinks?  
  
He drops the phone on the counter and stalks off to the back office. Let Jughead deal with the afternoon creeps on his own. He locks the door behind him. “A 1.5,” he says to the empty office.

-

Reggie dozes for a few hours in the office and the anger has turned to something different. It’s a low, simmering depression that he usually pushes away with enough drinks to keep the edge off. If these women that barely know him spread that he’s a 1.5, then soon enough it’ll get to the other women he’s slept with and who knows what will happen then. Nevermind that it’s been at least a month and a half since the last time he got laid. Anytime he seriously gets close to scoring, Jughead interjects with some comment that makes the woman storm off. The last time he brought a girl home, Jughead put on porn loudly in the living room. When Reggie checked, Jughead was in his room, with headphones on. Reggie could respect it if he was watching it, but nah. Just to ruin Reggie’s night.  
  
He feels like shit, but he should really tend bar tonight. Make a little cash. Jughead isn’t there when he leaves the office, which is how Reggie prefers it, really. He doesn’t need to be reminded that Jughead scored two points higher than him.  
  
When he makes it behind the bar, there’s an entire bag of uncut limes. He sighs and starts chopping them. Unintentionally, there’s a lime cut in to small enough pieces that they can’t really put it in anyone’s drink. He hates to waste the money of a perfectly good lime though, so he gets himself a beer and squeezes the lime bits into it. Luckily, this beer is nice and cold, and he’s back in his element.  
  
Reggie deals with a few customers, and manages to keep his annoyance about stupid rating systems at bay. A smoking hot blonde walks into the bar, and Reggie gives her the up and down, and then another up and down. Maybe he could give her a free drink, and they’d get to chatting.  
  
It’s not a bad fantasy, and as she approaches the bar, he puts on his most charming smile. “What can I get for you? On the house,” he says, before the order. Her cheeks redden, and it’s cute. She’s got a banging bod, and the grey dress is really accentuating it. There’s red polka dots too, and—  
  
It’s the same color grey as his roommate’s stupid beanie. Reggie sighs, and he definitely missed whatever this woman said she wanted to drink, but the door is swinging open again. Maybe he can use this as an excuse to play off his inattention.  
  
“Betty!” That’s Ronnie’s voice coming from the door, and Reggie sighs again. Right. Ronnie’s latest plaything; he should’ve recognized her. She sidles up behind Betty, and slides a possessive arm around her shoulder. “I hope this bartender wasn’t giving you any trouble,” she says. Reggie rolls his eyes, and Veronica blows him a kiss.  
  
“Actually, he offered me a drink on the house,” Betty says, leaning in to Veronica’s embrace.  
  
Ronnie fumbles in her purse and pulls out a twenty. “Thanks Reggie, but I’ve got her drinks. I wouldn’t want to risk her on such a poorly rated man.”  
  
He almost rips the twenty in half.

-

By the time Jughead wanders in around midnight, the bar is busy enough that Reggie should be distracted from Veronica’s snide remarks. Reggie’s had more drinks than he should while tending bar but he can still stand up, and he’s not slurring his speech, so what does it matter?  
  
“Do you want a fifteen?”Jughead asks as he comes behind the counter.  
  
“Is that a joke?” Reggie asks sharply. “Because of my rating? 1.5?” There’s a shot on the counter in front of him that he’s just made for a customer, but he tips it back in his mouth anyway. Reggie wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand.  
  
“No,” Jughead says. “Because legally, you’re supposed to take a break every four hours.”  
  
Reggie scoffs at him. “I’m a five star man, Forsythe. I don’t need a break from doing my job.”  
  
Jughead rolls his eyes, and starts taking customer orders. Maybe he will take a break though. There’s some cute girls in the crowd now, and surely they don’t know about his rating. The first group of woman he walks up to is promising enough. They’re all pretty but not so pretty that they’ll think they’re somehow out of his league. (Like anyone is.) It’s all going well enough, so much that he’s considering going for a threesome instead of only one girl. The brunette looks away though, pulls out her phone and starts scrolling through it.”  
  
“Are you rating me?” he asks, because he’s buzzed enough that he can’t help himself.  
  
She startles, and looks up from her phone. “No, I got a text, that’s all.”  
  
“But if you were rating me, what would you give me?” Reggie presses. “I’m a five star man, right?”  
  
The three women are starting to back away, and Reggie is _almost_ grateful when Jughead calls him back to the counter. He could’ve pulled it together and sealed the deal, sure, but they weren’t good enough for him anyway.  
  
“We’re getting slammed,” Jughead says calmly. Reggie doesn’t see anything other than their usual crowd, but whatever. He’ll just slide some extra money from the tip jar into his own pocket.

-

They finally close up at 3am, and Reggie is back at his shitty ass apartment, not getting laid, again. He shouldn’t, but he opens that hateful rating website again. Somehow, his rating has dropped below a 1.5. “Juggie,” he says, “am I really this terrible?”  
  
“Well…” Jughead slides an arm around the back of the couch. “They call you Mantle the Magnificent for a reason, right?”  
  
No one has called him that in years, other than as a joke, but he’ll take it. “So, I’m a five star man, right?” He shoves his phone back in his pocket so he can at least take a break from _looking_ at his rating.  
Jughead slurps back the foam of his beer. Reggie grimaces; he really hates that noise and how it looks. “You gotta stop worrying about that stuff, Reg.” Jughead’s arm is across his neck now.  
  
“I’m very good looking, you know.” That’s true. His therapist had agreed with him when he said it, and therapists are basically paid truth tellers. “So why wouldn’t they rate me five stars?” Reggie steals Jughead’s beer from his side of the couch and takes a long swig.  
  
There’s a clattering noise and Jughead’s barely even a smart phone hits the coffee table. “Do I need to rate you on this site so you’ll shut the fuck up about it? Because I’ll do it.” Jughead’s hand is on his leg. Probably supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but Reggie’s too worked up for it to feel that way.  
  
Reggie curls into Jughead a little bit. They spend a lot of time like this, he thinks. Maybe it isn’t so bad he came home without anyone. But he does still hate the rating thing. “What rating would you give me?” Reggie asks.  
  
“Let’s see, arrogant, totally self-centered, steals money from the tip jar…” The hand is moving up his thigh, though, and Reggie’s more into it than he wants to admit. He’s not totally dense to Jughead being attractive, and it’s not like he’s never slept with men before. If Reggie had realized his roommate was interested before…  
  
Reggie pulls himself free from Jughead’s grasp, and a look of trepidation flashes across Jughead’s face. It’s short lived, because it only takes Reggie a few moments to maneuver himself so that he’s straddling his roommate. “You don’t ever bring anyone home,” Reggie says. It’s more of a question than an accusation, but he’d be lying to deny that both are present.  
  
“Because, as much as I hate it, I really only want to blow _you_.” Jughead is kissing his neck, so slowly Reggie wonders if he’s imagining it, and Reggie’s breath catches in his throat.

Reggie pulls away enough that he can actually kiss Jughead, and he thinks they really should’ve done this before. Jughead tastes a little bit like beer, and those sour candies he keeps stashed everywhere. Jughead’s hand digs in to the nape of his neck and Reggie really doesn’t want him to stop. “I’m flattered,” Reggie says as he slides a hand under Jughead’s hoodie.  
  
Jughead laughs against his lips, but doesn’t correct him, which Reggie is counting as an entire star. Maybe he doesn’t need anyone else to rate him, not when Jughead is tugging at his shirt, and whispering filthy things in to his skin. But he’s a Mantle, he’s willing to _earn_ that rating now that it’s being offered by someone who matters.

**Author's Note:**

> technically, reggie is dennis, jughead is mac, and archie is charlie, but it's really not that serious/not that strict but it makes me laugh


End file.
